Shadow Of The Pines

Album: Sun on the Square (2018)
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Songfacts®:

  • Karen Peris, lead singer of the Lancaster, Pennsylvania-based folk pop group The Innocence Mission, told Songfacts the story behind this song from the band's 10th studio album: "It is the absence of a loved one, through change of some kind. Missing that person. Communicating over distance and holding that person in thought. So, this is a kind of lyric I seem to write repeatedly, in different ways, because of things that have happened and that loom in the future."
  • Anna Peris, daughter of Karen and Innocence Mission guitarist/percussionist Don Peris, plays viola on the track.
  • The title was borrowed from a road sign in New England.
  • Karen on the recording process: "Our favorite part of recording this was trying to grow the music as it went on, hearing our daughter's deep viola with my accordion part and Don's guitar, and I love his drumming. Adding a very high harmonica to the end, doubling the piano with pump organ. It's a little, old, wooden field organ that I love playing. It always surprises me because it can have an enormous, low, reedy, but also strings-like sound."

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